PRESS

A unique and original idea direct from Rathvilly found it’s way onto the nation’s screens last week.

Farm21 is a small company established by 26-year-old Sasha Bunbury, Stable Yard, Lisnavagh, Rathvilly, who creates rural-inspired furniture which is far from traditional.

Her funky and original designs were featured last week on RTE’s Open House along with Sasha, who spoke of the origins of her company farm21.

Sasha studied Architecture in Edinburgh and worked with furniture companies in Dublin, London and Iceland. Quickly realising there was a gap in the market for modern rural design, Sasha set out to design pieces to address the urban/rural divide with a quirky sense of humour.

Growing up on a farm has meant that agriculture and its social and physical consequences have been a major influence for Sasha and this is key to the image of her company. She is a rural romantic, with a love for the fast paced urban life, and she cites usability and humour as the force behind her work.

Sasha set up a design company between a stable yard in her Rathvilly home and a west London studio called farm21.

‘farm21 started off as a bit of a joke, to make people smile. However, there is a slightly more serious aspect. I’m interested in the gap between fast paced modern urban life and the slower rural pace’ she says. ‘Capturing something of both worlds, farm21 gives us a reminder of the other side’, Sasha added.

It all started on her Dad’s 60th birthday when Sasha made a table by filling a Perspex cube with straw from the family farm. Initially he was taken aback, he then loved it and she made more and more. She called it straw21, which has to be Irish straw, which she transports from her Carlow farmstead to London.

Soon after she started making lavender21, Perspex boxes filled with French lavender chosen for its deep colour.

Sasha soon drifted out of architecture following the success of her first cube. She is also producing a series of lyric benches, made from fallen wych elm from the farm in Co. Carlow. Engraved along the seat of each are lyrics from singers ranging from Elvis Costello to Bob Dylan, while she also sources lines from her favourite country or folk songs, with the length of the lyric dictating the length of the bench.

Sasha also produces a selection of canvas and silk roller blinds printed with digital photographs she has taken of the countryside in Co. Carlow and Wicklow. ‘I love the idea of tractor marks on silk,’ she bemuses. ‘Soon urban dwellers will be able to pull down the blinds on the urban jungle and see instead an icicle laden fence in early morning Wicklow sunlight,’ she adds.

Sasha is also working with top photographers to catch the changing Irish landscape.

More products for the future are likely to refer to agricultural technology and landscape and the farming lifestyle.

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